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The Future of Dynamic Events
Misthawk
Member UncommonPosts: 63
I am really enjoying the DE design, and I believe it is a good step towards phasing out the solo genre that a lot of mmos seem to have been encouraging recently. However, I am wondering what the future of them will be. Let me start by stating I have played all 3 BWEs, but not more than a few hours a day due to RL constraints. That being said, I know some, but not enough about the DE system, so, the reason for this thread is for insight or input from others who may have some ideas or facts about the DEs future.
As of the 3 BWEs we've played, most DEs require few or more players to complete and/or lead to the next tier. I've witnessed quite a few DEs that seem to require a massive amount of players to complete. Most of the DEs had more than enough folks there to advance the event, or complete it, which was excellent, and for me: encouraged me to have more effort on my part to get that gold medal.
When the game goes live I am sure that the DEs will be overflowing with new and beta players alike, which is what we all want. However, when the game eventually settle down in the future, and not everyone is a new player anymore, I am wondering if some of the DEs in some of the lower starting zones, or even the 15-25 zones, will become a "LFM for the 1-15 DEs!" kind of genre. I may speak for myself, but I enjoy the open grouping of DEs, and I don't miss the long delays in finding other players to complete a task, like in other mmos. Will they adjust the difficulty of the DE (if they already don't) based on the amount of players at the DE, like Rift does?
This might be a concern (maybe not) about the future of WvW, when servers slow down, will the runt servers be the ones to always fall behind on the ranking board, because they lack players? Thus, causing server mergers? It is too early to tell, I think. Yet, it has crossed my mind, due to another mmo I played a few years ago, being heavily populated on one side, but not the other in RvR.
Just some food for thought, thanks for reading, and replying.
Comments
Home server only matters for WvW, you can play (supposedly, not quite sure how) on the PvE portion of any server in the game.
At least this is what Anet has said, just not sure how you actually do it... or if that is still the plan/available.
You just go to the Server Selection Screen and use the "Guest" option (disabled in Beta).
ArenaNet mentioned that you need to have a friend on other server so you can "guest" at their server if you want to play with them. You cannot however just go on random servers if you don't know anyone that is there. I think the features weren't implemented yet in the beta, so no one really knows how it will work.
Never even knew that feature was available. Even if you could just "quest" on random servers, that would be something I never even heard of.
Also the events scale depending on how many people are in the area. So if only one or two people are there for the event it will be scaled for that many people. As more people show up, the system will increase the spawns to make it harder. If people leave then you will probably fail the event and get to see the fail event - event.
I played on a low population server in the BWE3 in non asura/sylvari zones while also being pretty high level logging in 2 hours before the real starting time so I had quite a lonely experience for the most part, the DE's could all be soloed easily unless they had [Group] in their names.
How dynamic are the events? Are the dynamic events always at the same location or random locations? You got to an area where there's a dynamic event going on, is it always the same monsters involved in the event and are the "quests" within the event always the same?
The reality is, that's probably going to happen at some point. Always does. What you should be wondering is 'how long will this take to happen'.
In GW1, the original content stayed pretty populated well into the game's life cycle. It's sometimes harder to find people nowadays, but the game has been out for ~7 years or so.
To be honestly, I don't think it will be that big of a deal, not until much later in the game's lifespan (ie 8months -1year in, or later). This game is basically an altoholic's worst nightmare. There is soo much content in this game, so much to do, and so much variety, that a lot of players are having trouble figuring out what character to play first. You can be damned sure that a lot of players are going to be rolling alts, and will be going back through a lot of these lower areas as a result.
From what I saw, the dynamic event usually starts at the same place, but does pan out (some, not all) depending on the actions of the players. By actions, I mean, will some track the NPC to the next tier event, or just run off. Yet, that's just what I've witnessed. I did hear some events are more large scaled and one in particular starts from a random drop that some random player picks up.
Given the nature of guesting on servers for PVE purposes, when it starts getting more difficult to find lots of people around for low level stuff, unofficial designated servers for such things will arise on their own.
Much like how if you've ever played runescape, people knew to congregate on certain servers when looking to engage in particular activities like soul wars etc.
This will probably occur for non low level things too. Looking to do level 80 dungeons and want a steady stream of people? Come guest at these 6 servers that people congregate on for high level dungeons etc.
That's enough to take care of such things already but you also have to consider that it's a B2P game. Not only is it B2P, it's a B2P game without a big gear grind. There isn't anything to cause people considering buying the game say 2 years from now from thinking "Eh I'll never be able to catch up, not going to bother". You'll probably see a more steady influx of new players buying the game than you see in standard MMOs for both of these reasons. (B2P, no gear grind)
Nothing about the events are random. What makes them dynamic is how they are triggered, and how player action (or inaction) determines what the next event in the chain will be.
Basically each event is the same, but which of these events you are doing is constantly changing. The centaurs will attack your village, if you drive them out there will be a rallying party to go after them. If you go after them and fail, they will come back to attack your village, but if you succeed, you will push on into their village. And so on, and so forth.
There are also different types of progressions with the dynamic events. Some are pendulums:
your village destroyed <-> defend village <-> rebuild village <-> chase centaurs <-> setup siege equipment <-> assault centaur village <-> kill centaur leader
Some are branching trees. (each event has multiple possible outcomes that can be triggered based on player(s) actions).
Some are based on a series of checks. (i.e. meta events require certain dynamic events to be completed before they will trigger, resulting in a massive event covering a large portion of the zone).
Some events overlap and chain w/ other events. (i.e. 1 event chain may overlap w/ another chain, resulting in players having a choice between which one they decide to do. It's not always obvious which event is which, either).
Whenever you come across any particular event in the world, it could be on phase 1 out of 6 possible phases, or it could be on 1 out of 50 possible phases. It all depends on the zone, the event, and where it is in the chain of events. There are 1000s of these though.
On the other hand, if I'm not interested in the game now why would I miraculously change my mind in 2 years? The only game I can think of with a slow steady influx of new players like you're talking about is Eve. I don't think GW2 is another Eve although you might.
Thanks for the info. Does sound interesting and really can't wait to see what the next evolutionary step in dynamic events will be.
They are plenty of events for small groups and solo players, they seam to have a lot of them you can actually trigger and follow if you cool down and take your time. Just pay attention to npc, talk to them if they ask you something, follow them when they run around, be carefull if they seam to build stuff around, keep at least a minutes after an event end, and you might see a lot more of them. A lot of people totally miss event or part of the chain, if there is no huge marks on the map they just run away.
About server handling, i think what they did in the last beta was really great, they actually managed to squeeze down the number of server and it was great, really good job and decision here.
http://guildwars2grandmaster.com/news/world-list-server-matchmaking/
less servers then there were in the last beta, even though there are more people in this one. This is do to an upgrade in server capacity and a focus on larger populations.
EQ2 fan sites
I think that "dynamic events" are going to be standard feature in future MMORPGs.
I can see 4 problems with them:
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
Apart from nr3 GW2 does not suffer from these problems, and nr3 could possibly start to happen in the later levels.
They are pretty simple to avoid
1. Proper scaling of the event to the amount of people (just changing numbers around)
2. If you absolutely must have quests don't put quest givers in areas affected by DE's or simply just don't have quests like GW2 (Personal story avoids this by putting you into an instance of the area)
4. Just don't create such scenarios, don't make an event where you have hundreds of aoeable continously respawning mobs that give full mob xp and loot while not contributing to the DE for example or similarly implement mobs with a better loot table that can be farmed by keeping the DE from finishing. It's not exactly rocket science and I haven't seen anything exploitable like that so far.
Ah, thanks for the link. Looks like a legit upgrade to me. Rather have fewer servers that support larger populations, than 30 servers that have mostly low populations.
also ANet said they will be added ,removeing and changeing the DE's over time. they said more the one time you can go back to an area a mounth latter things wil have changed there may be new DE's . some DE's may have change etc.
they are makeing it so you want to go back to lower zones to see what has change and i thikn with the downscaling you will see a lot more higher lvl players in low lvl zones then you do in other mmo's